Christmas is not too far away right now, ok so it may be in “normal” terms but in SEO terms you are right on the cusp of missing out on those seasonal sales if you haven’t kept some pages of your website listed from last year!
How?
You may have produced special Christmas Pages last year for your all important special offers and Seasonal offerings, rather than deleting them from the website or unlinking them completely it is a much better idea to keep the pages on the website and use a HTML sitemap so they are still live and linked from the main site. This way all you need to do is change the links on your internal and homepage once the Autumn season hits to give you that extra boost in rankings ready for the Christmas season again. Try not to change the content too much on the page, add that this is the previous season’s selection of gifts/special offers and perhaps even an email signup to let the customer know when your Christmas Goodies go live.
Why?
A few reasons:
- You worked hard to get those Christmas Search Engine listings last season and without the pages there, still linked in to the site, those listings will disappear very quickly, meaning you have to start all over again next season. Leave them in place, you will be surprised how many visits they may actually get throughout the year. People start searching online for Christmas offers around the end of January and February – particularly if you are in the hotel, B&B or travel industry. Online purchases come a little bit later on, around June/July.
- Unless you have used a 301 redirect (redirected the Christmas pages to another page on your site) you are losing valuable visitors to your site. Even with a 301 redirect in place these visitors are likely to bounce, much better to try and build your Christmas email list and still have the page in place!
- Less work for you to do when Christmas comes around! You will have enough to do with all those orders, why worry about the SEO on your site? The pages are still there, just change the items/offers, link from your homepage and away you go – still keep a close eye on rankings but no need to panic once November comes knocking.
Of course these tips don’t just apply to Christmas, any season or special occasion that you promote via your site should get the same treatment. If you haven’t even thought about Halloween yet, make that next to do on your list! Why not get your Valentines and Mothers Day pages sorted now before Christmas too – otherwise you will be worrying about them once the 1st of January comes around. 😉
